Summary

They are met with the sight of Eri, unharmed, and running towards them at full speed. Aizawa stops in his tracks and she crashes into him, throwing her arms around his legs and hiding her face in the fabric of his pants. Todoroki stops as well, but his eyes rove around the burning chaos, searching for the cause of her distress.

He finds it several meters away, bent double in the middle of the battlefield. A person, a man, a—a boy? A young man, huddled over while flames rage around him, blue in hue and casting ghastly shadows across the ground.

Summary

“I can’t leave,” Hawks mutters. “I’m meeting someone.”

“Yeah, you’re two seconds away from meeting the angel of death,” the voice scoffs, and suddenly it sounds loud and clear, no longer smothered. Hawks snaps his eyes open. He’s met with the sight of wrinkled, purple scarring and turquoise blue eyes a few feet away from his face.

Summary

School starts a month later. The day before the first day of classes, a YouTube video goes viral.

Todoroki Shouto sets his father’s new home ablaze with a furious blast of orange fire, then looks up at the security camera with a dull expression on his face. Next to him, a man with a patchwork face leers up at the camera before adding azure blue flames to the mix. They then disappear into the smoke and glowing ash like phantoms.

“He was supposed to be in our class,” their homeroom teacher, a tired-looking man named Aizawa, tells them. “No one is sure of his motives yet, but take this as a warning. Villainy will oftentimes catch you by surprise.”

Summary

It’s with a jarring moment of unpleasant clarity that it truly dawns on Todoroki how Bakugou must have felt when it seemed the entire world was convinced he’d turn to villainy. He fumbles to close the tab and shove his phone away from him. It slides across the floor and hits the opposite wall with a dull thunk.

It’s just the way the media is, he reminds himself. They’ll say anything for a scoop. That doesn’t mean that it’s true.

Summary

“You’re still on shaky ground, Number Two,” Dabi warns him, and Hawks looks back up sharply. “I don’t trust you completely. Shigaraki says to let you in, but something about you isn’t quite right.”

This is a game Dabi plays. A never ending cycle of distrust, no matter what Hawks does to prove himself. It’s because he’s a hero, he has to remind himself. Many villains, from what he’s come to learn, have been wronged by heroes at some point in their tangled up pasts.

It’s hard not to feel guilty, knowing that by the end of all this, he’ll have done the same.

Tags

Summary

“Do I have a choice?”

“There’s always a choice.”

Hawks snorts. There’s the wrong choice, and then there’s the right one. He can make everything he’s done so far mean something, or he can throw it all away. If it comes out he’s been a double agent all along the League will fold in on itself and regroup, even less trusting than before. They won’t get an opportunity like this again.

*

When pictures surface of Hawks meeting with Dabi, he has to make a decision. Sacrifice his cover, or sacrifice his career.

Summary

Todoroki Touya has only really ever had himself to rely on. He's never made any friends, or at least, never kept them for long. He's the one who takes care of the house, of his siblings, of everything except what his father won't let him touch. And he locks himself up, in a tiny little box, where all the fragile parts himself can, hopefully, stay safe.

That smug ass bastard Hawks seems to think he's better off without walls for safe-keeping. What does he know? Touya has only ever been made of walls; a little lock box, self-made supports and wax wings to keep him aloft amongst it all.

If he lets it all go, if his wings melt in the brilliant firey sun that is Takahashi Yuuto-